Fire At Homer Glen Horse Riding Barn 'A Real Blessing In Disguise'

HOMER GLEN, IL — Marlene Karman describes the 10 minutes it took her to drive from her home to the private farm that houses the Holistic Riding Equestrian Therapy (HRET) center as perhaps the longest 10 minutes of her life.

Karman, the executive director of the not-for-profit organization that provides therapy to children with special needs through horses, remembers sitting on her couch at 10 p.m. on Dec. 15 when images of fire trucks arriving at the Homer Glen-based farm started popping up on her phone.

Without thinking or alerting her husband of what was happening, Karman dashed to her car, concerned most that the fire would reach the 17 horses that HRET uses to provide therapy for children from seven local schools.

In those 10 minutes, there were no tears, no screaming, no emotions, Karman said. Just prayers. In those 10 minutes, Karman said, all she could envision was having to get chains and a tractor to drag 17 carcasses out of the facility’s horse barn.

So, Karman prayed, asking God not to allow the fire to harm the horses and, in turn, take such a meaningful program away from the 100 children with whom HRET currently works.

“I just prayed every, every, every step of the way,” Karman told Patch. “God, please don’t let it be the horse barn.”

Karman and her husband arrived on the scene to find firefighters battling a blaze that was first noticed by two skateboarders, who saw smoke from the fire and immediately went home and called 911. Within minutes, the Homer Glen Fire Department arrived with 6,000 gallons of water — 1,000 of which were used to get the fire under control.

Once she saw that the horse barn had not been affected, Karman surveyed the scene in silence, numb to everything that was happening around her. As long as the horses weren’t hurt — or worse — she started to think that everything would be OK as long as the horses that provide so much good for so many kids were going to be OK.

“This has turned out to be one of the best fires we could have ever had,” Karman said.

A GoFundMe effort has been launched in an effort to raise $150,000 to rebuild the parts of the farm that were damaged by the fire. Karman and the army of 125 volunteers who work with the organization are searching for a roofing company that might be willing to donate time and services to replace the roof on the buildings that were damaged by the blaze. In addition, Karman is searching for a local HVAC company that would also be willing to provide services to get the farm operational by the end of February, when the program is scheduled to start up again working with school children.

Karman said $100,000 of donations will go toward heating the riding arena and installing new insulation. Another $75,000 will go toward repairing the roof of two buildings along with some electrical work that will allow the business to get back to doing what it does best.

Because HRET is a tenant at the farm where the organization is based, many of the costs of improvements made by Karman are not covered by insurance because she does not own the property, she said.

While there is no immediate timeline for all of the improvements and rebuilding to be completed, Karman’s biggest challenge is getting the farm operational in time for the school programs to begin in a couple of months.

The fire took place at a time when the school program was still in session, which offered another blessing Karman didn’t envision. As school children saw the damage the fire had done, some of the children noticed how the burn pattern left by the fire on the outside of the program’s riding arena resembled Christmas trees with an angel on top.

In the days following, a group of local kids volunteered to come to the facility and paint Christmas trees with yellow stars on top over the burn pattern as a reminder of the fact more damage wasn’t done.

As part of the HRET program, school children are given responsibility for caring for the horses, which they know can’t take care of themselves. So instead, the kids who represent the nearly 100 families the organization work with learn self-confidence through the duties they perform at the farm. The mission of the program isn’t to teach kids to ride horses, but instead to empower the program’s participants to have a responsibility for something else.

“A lot of these kids don’t have anything else they can do,” Karman said. “But a lot of these kids will look at you and say ‘barn’ — and that’s their purpose.”

She added: “(The kids) are normally the ones being taken care of and now, these animals need them to take care of them. And that’s where the power comes in.”

In addition to the horses remaining safe, Karman said that other blessings have come out of the fire. On the night of the blaze, Karman walked into the horse barn with five firefighters to show them how to properly evacuate horses in a fire. She said that she will work with Homer Glen fire officials to write a fire evacuation plan about how to rescue horses if they’re ever in a position to do so again.

“This has turned out to be a real blessing in disguise,” Karman said. “It’s a blessing – I will say that to anyone who asks me. God, for his people, He takes all the bad and makes something good, and He made something good come out of this.”

And now, Marlene Karman, who is 72, and her husband, Art, who is 86, are bound and determined to return the farm to what it was before the fire. Now, perhaps more than ever, they wonder how they can ever stop the work that brings so much meaning to so many kids and their families.

And in the moments when they even start to consider retirement, they just look at the photo of the Christmas tree burn pattern that is protected by the guardian angel and realize that they simply can’t walk away.

“We have transformed so many lives,” Karman told Patch. “I don’t see quitting — I’m going to die at the arena, and they’re going to bury me there. Because there’s no way (I can quit). It has nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my husband, and nothing to do with HRET.

“We can buy this 10-acre farm and can make it a legacy, and it won’t have to quit when we quit.”